Superguanajas

Before I start, I have to explain the meaning of this adopted Canarian word: "guanajo/a". It comes from the arahuaco language and it´s used in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It designates contemptuously a silly and/or stupid  person*... Pronounce it like this: "supawanahas"...

This Sunday I finally felt down: it´s not easy to assimilate that you are going to be without a job and you have to look for another one in no time. You feel guilty because you think you are responsible of many matters at the same time and you want the people that surrounds you to be happy... and you believe (with no scientific explanation at all) that you take all the merits. Normally this weight on my shoulders is not a problem but it seems that my body needed to say "Enough is enough!" and I had to cry to relieve tension. Yes, I am a woman after all: when I finished crying, even when I didn´t have a solution to my problem, I felt relieved. I know that men do not understand this reasoning, which has no reason at all, but I reccommend you to do what my partner did: he just held me in his arms. We do not need anymore (Damn! I should have made you pay for this piece of advice!)

Yesterday afternoon I laid down on the couch watching realities. In one of them you can be witness of the birth of a baby and what surrounds it. One of the cases I saw was about a couple that already had a two year-old baby and they were expecting their second kid. The father on one side was worrier about his best friend´s stag night than the birth of the baby; the mother on the other side, histeric, weighing up everything, with unhealthy remorse, because she felt she wasn´t doing things as well as she would like to. Her guilt made me feel sorry for her. Finally, we have the typical end: the mother tied up with both babies (thank God her mum was not as histeric as she was and she helped her out); The father went to the stag night one day after his second and last baby was born but only had a beer and came back early home. In the end, the father toed the line and colaborated with her: he took care of the two year-old baby so she could go to the gymn to get fit. When the programme finished, I was exhausted.

I decided to take Venus for a walk, trying to stop thinking about all I have to do to be a superwoman: the house, my daughter´s school, pay my debts, work, look for a job, recycle myself, learn new things, do exercise, make myself up, be a good cook, be a good citizen, good manager, good friend, good lover, good daughter, good mother, good pack leader... I took my new MP4 and I heard my all-time favourite band´s music (Duran Duran), went out and cleared my head a bit. I could do it and I was happy for a moment: I needed nothing else.

I saw a friend of mine during my walk. Last week she was sick and she didn´t think about going back to work yet, even when she is self-employed and this is one of the best seasons for her job (all of us spend what we don´t have on Christmas time). When I sat down with her she explained me she has suffered from ansiety´s attacks because all she had to get out in her daily life: house, husband, daughter, job... Many women don´t know how to explode by crying and she´s one of them. Luckily I can. She needed to have acupuncture done on her.

At the end, we agreed that today´s women have a strong pressure to be a superwoman: a woman that is successful in all aspects of her life... When we were saying goodbye, she declared this statement: "We are not Superwomen but Superguanajas!". I guess I don´t have to explain the meaning of this word right now.

There are women that think the best situation is to stay at home and wait for the men to bring the money. The complications are not many and you don´t have the responsibility of all the spendings on top of your head... The only thing you have to worry about is to take care of the rest of the family, to be a good cook, mum, wife, friend, lover, household manager, stunning, take care of yourself, have the house tidy and clean... It´s not too much, isn´t it?

If you ask me, I don´t want to renounce to my work career. I come from a family full of fighter, brave and hard-working women. I couldn´t be at home, when I can develop other aspects of my personality in a job. I bought the  idea of a more fulfilled woman is the one that also works outside home... The truth is that she is more tied up also!

I didn´t have a New Year´s good intention but this is going to be one of them: I will stop being a "Superguanaja" trying to be a Superwoman and be a simple mortal, with her defects and obsession. To achieve this good intention I have to let other help me more, I have to learn not to wait for everything to be as I expected, not to be perfectionist with myself, be thankful with what life has given me so far and leaving away those remorse feelings... This only good intention is going to take me a long time, so I´m not promised myself anything else...

*http://www.deperu.com/diccionario/?pal=guanajo

(First published on http://maritza-gonzalez.blogspot.com/ on December 28th 2010)

Reflexions when you turn 40

This year I began my fourth decade. Last year, just six months before, I called my best friend and asked her to organize a "surprise" birthday party for me. As always, she did as promised and it was celebrated in a rural accommodation in the south part of Tenerife island.

Surrounded by banana trees, with a swimmingpool, kitchen and common spaces for our own enjoyment, we started to spend the day celebrating my first forty years. Everyone that had to be there was there (except for my family, that couldn´t come over). I´ve got old friends (in time) but also lately I´ve met wonderful people that helped me go ahead and marked me for life... We finished the party early in the morning the next day, playing like kids: I will never forget those shared moments with my loved ones.... Many of them are waiting for my 50th anniversary!

This year I´ve been thinking about all that I´ve lived these years. The conclusion is that I´ve been blessed with many opportunities that made me meet great people along the way...

When I was a child, I imagine myself as a forty year-old person with stability in all dimensions of my life: personal, job...; a person devoted to her stable family after some years of doing the same; a person with a University career that would work to keep the family; a person that wouldn´t need to think about anything else but what to wear or to cook for the next day... That´s how forty year-old people looked like when I was a child.

Time changed this situation.

The reality has been different: I´ve had uncertainty in my personal life (untill a few years ago) and in my work life (today). I didn´t have a stable relationship but many in these last twenty years. The fact that I´ve finished a university career or having a good level or English or German has meant nothing to get a stable job. Kids didn´t arrive but one, because the circumstances doesn´t let me bring a sibling to my daughter. Since I finished school I only had one season of crisis (sometimes harder, somethimes milder)...

Life doesn´t bring you what you want but what your really need. Many people of my age planned their lives so much that, when everything started to fall down, they felt defrauded and disconcerted. It seems that the world goes round faster and faster. We just finish to adapt to the circumstances, when we have to plan new changes in our lives, so we don´t stay behind. One positive thinking: this brings us the opportunity to "extend" our youth, because we have to do what we did when we were younger. That´s why people say that the new forties are like the old thirties.

There is a Chinese curse that says: "I wish you live in time of changes". This is really a bad wish thrown to us: uncertainty, changes, alterations... Anonimam Hombre Anónimo* says in his last poster: "You have to jump" (or something similar)... I don´t think the word "constantly" could fit in.

Well, if at forty I´m reflecting like this, I don´t want to imagine how bore I could become in ten years... I´ll try not to think so much, but I´ll act and update myself every day...

*Anonimam Hombre Anónimo.- An artist that reflects his work of art throught a poster that can be read from the A5 (a motorway in Tenerife).
(First published on http://maritza-gonzalez.blogspot.com/ on December 9th 2010)

In time of crisis... show the best of your faces...

It´s difficult to  start this blog´s entrance. Its purpose is trying to encourage everyone in this difficult time, including me. In many ways, most of us are not having the best time of our lives: some with precarious jobs, other with no job at all, others with a salary that last only ten days... What´s the use of enumerate?

As many friends of mine know through my "Facebook" profile, I like to be inform. This effort is not a waste. This is my way to try to understand this fast, ever-changing world. The intention of publishing articles is to help other to take a decision by being informed, to be conscious about that the next step they are going to take is the most correct one possible.... At least, we can say: "Given all possibilities, I chose the best option".

As far as I know, Spain is still the country where the cleverest doesn´t run: he/she flies; where the one that gets the power doesn´t want to leave place to others even when this person has ruined more than a business for his/her bad management, so they can try to solve the situation; where many jobs are not designed according to the market´s needs but to the worker´s need (or "string-pulling"); where, it doesn´t matter how much hard you work, you won´t be compensated with some economical stability... I could say many other examples but I don´t want to bore you to death.

Giving all those reasons, I just want to throw in the towel many times  and I wonder why so much effort wasted: I´m going to get to Suspense Blind Alley every time. Then I look to my daughter´s picture, happily and confidently smiling at me and I say to myself:  "Even when I return to the same alley, I have to do the impossible to get out of there and find other better way...".

Some years ago I had the pleasure to meet a family with two children: the mother, from Venezuela, the father from USA... both kids austistic. It seems that both parents got the recesive gen and they coudn´t have any other child, having the sure risk of an autistic child. One day I asked him if he didn´t consider his fate unfair: what he answered made me change about misfortunes: "You, latin people, are very influenced by the Catholic Church´s culture: you think that this misfortune is a God´s punishment. I think that we are lucky to raise this special children, that this will make us stronger and we have to be grateful that we are the ones and not any other that can not confront this situation"... What a lesson!

And once more, defeated by my positivism, I think that every experience will make me stronger and more ready for anything that will come. If I keep up this attitude I will value whatever I will have to live in a just way  and it will improve my life... ... There´s no other option possible!

(First published on December 1st in http://maritza-gonzalez.blogspot.com/)